{ Tag Archives } Pliny

Acus sive belone unus piscium dehiscente propter multitudinem utero parit. The pipefish (acus, or belone) is the one fish that gives birth by its womb splitting open, due to its great number [of young]. The name belone has been observed to refer to both a toothed fish and a toothless one. The toothed fish, namely […]

Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 37.10, on quartz crystals: Quæ vero sine vitio sint, pura esse malunt, acenteta appellantes, nec spumei coloris, sed limpidæ aquæ. Those which are in fact flawless are preferred uncut and are called acenteta; and they are not cloudy in color, but of the color of clear water. Acentetum is from the […]

I started writing this egons ago—late January—but it got enormous and unwieldy and I never managed to whip it into much of a presentable shape. But then, this is a blog—there’s nothing wrong with posting incomplete ideas per se. If this ever gets finished, it’ll be a page of its own on the sidebar here. […]

So I found out that talk page editing on the dictionary‘s been broken, possibly for quite a while now. I should have realized the spambots were being mighty quiet. It should be working again now; and now that it’s back in operation Iustinus noticed my entry for ‘brew‘ only had a phrasal translation—the Romans weren’t […]

Pliny, Naturalis Historia 21.54: Tribulo proprietas, quod et fructum spinosum habet. The caltrop has the distinctive property that it even has a spiny fruit. There are a few plants called tribulus ‘caltrop’, in both English and Latin. The one that today has Tribulus as its scientific name, the puncturevine, is probably not the one being referred to, […]

Pliny on how pearls are formed (Naturalis Historia, 9.54): Has ubi genitalis anni stimularit hora, pandentes se quadam oscitatione impleri roscido conceptu tradunt, gravidas postea eniti, partumque concharum esse margaritas pro qualitate roris accepti. When the birthing season of the year stimulates these creatures, it is said that they, opening themselves wide with a kind […]

Pliny on the Labyrinth at Heracleopolis (Naturalis Historia 36.19) praeterea templa omnium Aegypti deorum contineat superque Nemesis XL aediculis incluserit pyramides complures quadragenarum ulnarum senas radice ἀρούρας optinentes. Additionally, it would contain temples of all the gods of Egypt, and of Nemesis as well; among its forty shrines it would have included many pyramids, each […]